When autumn 2006 arrived, I was already a student in the evening department of MEPhI, majoring in Applied Informatics in Economics. By that time, I had read not only Dale Carnegie’s books but also works like “Games People Play” by Eric Berne, as well as works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, all of which influenced me greatly. These books helped me become more sociable and taught me not to be afraid of communicating with people, which was especially important in the early stages of adulthood. I began to understand others better, which helped me in further relationships, both in my studies and in my personal life.
I discovered with some disappointment that programming at university was taught in Pascal. Given that I was already working with C++ at my company, switching to Pascal felt like a step back. Nevertheless, everyone at the university acknowledged that I was the strongest in programming.
When I first enrolled, our group unexpectedly split into two parts. One day, a few guys approached me, asking if they could copy my programming assignment. Remembering my school years—when I often allowed others to copy from me, which frequently led to people treating me as compliant and unreliable—I decided to act differently this time. I asked, “And what will you give me in return?” This was the moment when I tried to find a balance between my desire to help and the need to defend my own interests. I thought for a long time about how to act properly, realizing that every action shapes relationships within the group. From then on, relationships in the group changed. But with those with whom I developed good relations, we once undertook a crazy adventure—skydiving. After a day of training, we jumped from a height of 800 meters. This experience, despite an incident with my classmate and then-friend, who landed with two deployed parachutes and broke his leg, will remain in my memory forever.
In addition, that fall I met two girls. Thanks to the STS chat, I arranged a date with Yana, but to my surprise, she brought a friend with her. I had the silly idea to invite my friend Vasya to balance the group. However, when Vasya arrived, he brought Zhenya with him, and both of them were already high. I was ashamed of their condition and tried to keep my distance from them at the club, spending time only with Yana and her friend. That evening became my first experience of kissing. Sitting between two girls, I kissed Yana. Then, to add a playful twist, I asked her friend if she could kiss better. She also demonstrated her skills. From that evening, Yana and I started to develop a closer relationship, and soon we began dating. Our romance lasted a couple of months, but over time, we realized we weren’t right for each other and broke up.
After that, my attention turned to Nika, a girl from a wealthy family who told me how her stepfather drove a Ferrari. Our relationship was brief but vivid and lasted only two weeks. Despite the brevity of these relations, we still sometimes keep in touch, and I appreciate those moments.
Meanwhile, the MGIMO guys started inviting more and more people into my chat, which started causing me problems. I had to keep my home computer on all the time, which required a lot of bandwidth and tension. At that time, internet traffic was expensive, so I decided to move the chat to the server at the office where I worked. This decision eventually turned into problems: the company received large bills for traffic, and for some time, they couldn’t figure out why this was happening. In half a year, I, of course, got into serious trouble for this, but that was yet to come.
I also tried to keep in touch with friends from school, especially with Kolya P. However, over time, Kolya started spending more time with guys who were involved in not the best activities—they sold drugs, engaged in petty hooliganism. One of the popular activities in their circle was borrowing money and not returning it.
One day Kolya borrowed money from me, and trusting him, I gave him the amount he asked for. However, he disappeared and never returned the debt. Some time later, Kolya P. again asked me for money, and realizing that the same story could repeat itself, I suggested taking his phone as collateral. It was a rather expensive phone for those times, and Kolya P. agreed.
However, one day he came to my house with two local hooligans and began demanding the phone back, threatening me with force. They snatched my apartment keys and said they would only return them after I returned the phone.
It was a weekend. I was desperate and decided to call my boss. He listened to me and asked me to come to the office. When I was in his office, I told him everything as it was. He listened carefully and then, looking at me, said, “If you really are not at fault in what happened, I’ll help you.”
“I’m not at fault,” I answered firmly.
Then my boss dialed his friend and colleague—Alexander. After a while, Alexander arrived in his Nissan Pathfinder, and we all got into the car. Our first stop was the police station. My boss got out and started talking to the officers on duty, explaining the situation:
“Our guy is being bullied.”
The policemen laughed:
“You mean you’re bullying him?”
My boss answered calmly:
“Of course not, why would we come here then? In your district, some local hooligans are bullying our guy. Could you talk to them so there won’t be any problems later?”
The policemen exchanged glances, and then one of them nodded:
“No problem.”
My boss also asked one of the policemen to come with us. We took him along and headed to the meeting place.
Our team—me, my boss, Alexander, and the policeman—went to Kolya and his accomplices. When we arrived, I got out of the car and noticed that in the distance, on the playground, one of Kolya’s accomplices, nicknamed Kashtor, was sitting. He saw me and started walking toward me. At that moment, my colleagues and the policeman acted quickly—they detained Kashtor and put him in the car.
I stayed outside. Kashtor’s girlfriend, who was nearby, started yelling at me, angry and demanding explanations:
“What have you done?! What have you done?!” she kept repeating, not letting me rest for a second.
But inside, I was already calm. I knew that now everything was going according to plan, and that justice would finally prevail.
After a while, everyone got out of the car, and I was told that I now had “personal protection” in the neighborhood—the very same hooligans who previously bullied me now promised they would protect me. They returned my keys, and the incident was resolved. After this incident, I completely stopped communicating with Kolya P.
All this time, I successfully managed programming both at university and at work. However, when the time came for the first winter exam session at MEPhI, I faced the fact that I could not understand chemistry, which we started studying again. Even in school, this subject was difficult for me, and by the winter exam session at the university, I still couldn’t master it. I failed the chemistry exam, and honestly, I had no desire to retake it. I increasingly realized that the academic program at the university did not correspond to my interests and real professional needs. Combining work in the morning and studies in the evening was difficult, and I began to think that I should develop myself not only in programming, which I was already doing at work, but also in the humanities, which attracted me more and more.
